


So far around the bend

by ticketybye



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: But they love each other and it shows eventually I pinky-promise, How Do I Tag, Light Angst, M/M, POV Crowley (Good Omens), POV First Person, Pining, Post-Almost Apocalypse (Good Omens), Post-Canon, Post-Episode: Good Omens: Lockdown, Stream of Consciousness, This is post-canon but there has been no love declaration no resolution NOTHING my pals
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:27:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25169926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ticketybye/pseuds/ticketybye
Summary: The thing is – the thing about a global pandemic is, it almost makes you forget you’re not human.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	1. Chapter 1

The thing is – the thing about a global pandemic is, it almost makes you forget you’re not human.

I peek through the curtains. The street: empty. The corner shop: closed. A guy lowering his mask to smoke a cigarette: this shit wiles itself. Is that a car? Yes. Police.

I go back to bed. There’s no point. No point in doing anything. There might have been a point – at some point in the past – in being an angel or a demon during a worldwide catastrophe. Things to do. Foment to be fomented. Lungs to heal.

Hits the lungs, this thing. Badly. It’s very bad not to be able to breathe. Know this. Discorporated from drowning once. That was not good. Not good at all. Aziraphale wasn’t there either. When I saw him after that, he did not recognize me. New body. Ish. Thought I was some new demon. Lucky him. It was so early on and I was in too deep already. Would have recognized him anywhere – with any old face. Without his eyes, his hair, his hands.

His hands. I think of his hands as I consider mine. Long, pale. Harsh-looking. Unlike his. Never mind.

No point, anyway. I’ll just lie around, think thoughts. It’s been a week already and my brain’s rotting.

The thing is – things were going so bloody well, weren’t they? We’d just started talking on the phone. When we weren’t together, so not very often. But still – it was good to hear his voice, late at night.

Lame.

AirPods are, I’m sure, very demonic insofar as they distract pedestrians and make everyone look like they’re talking to themselves. Also, they have radiation thingies that will at some point in the future be proven to be bad for you. For humans. Or is that earphones? Phones in general? Anyway. Point is. With them on, I can talk to him and not only forget about my phone, but also have my hands free. To just. Do things. Not _those things_ , just like, maybe, holding a pillow.

Lame, lame, dumbfoundingly lame, a pathetic excuse for a demon bringing shame on the legion of the damned. I’m no longer a demon, not strictly. But my point stands.

Phone. Unlock it. Go to calls. His name. Once, twice, three times. A list of him, Aziraphale, Aziraphale, Aziraphale, a mantra in my head. My thumb hovers. Do I, don’t I.

It’s always like this, isn’t it? Almost comforting, how some things don’t change. Always the fear, always the walking on eggshells, always the going one step too far, one beat too fast. Doesn’t matter that people are dying; doesn’t matter that no one’s checking anymore; doesn’t matter that I am over here, and he is over there, and we’re thinking – I know we both are – that we’d be better off sharing space. No. Still my thumb hovers, still he has to take his time, still he is the one to choose.

I throw the phone away.

Back to thinking the thoughts. By the way – why do I always have to think of him? Why must I be so boring? There is much more to life than love. Not that this is love, oh no, this is... this is, well, attachment.

Can’t be blamed, really. Can’t be helped. When you’re alone, _really alone_ , when there’s one being in the entire universe that even remotely understands you, that’s even remotely like you – you’re bound to love them.

Not that this is love.

Not that I would know. Or that _he_ would know.

Love. Love is a made-up thing. People either belong to each other or they don’t.

A message. Him? No.

_Wyd_

Anathema. Read. Reply? Maybe.

_Sleeping_

_Clearly not_

_You two okay?_

_Yeah. Having the only fun you can have while quarantined._

I smile. Good for her. Another message.

_You? Angel?_

_Good. Dunno abt him_

_What do you mean?_

_Not together_

_Weird!!!_

_Says it’s against the rules_

_There are no rules_

_I know right?_

_Want me to speak to him?_

_No no no. This will be over soon_

_Will it?_

_Well, soon for us. You’ll probably be old by then. Good thing you’re together._

_Rude_

_Stay home, ok?_

_Yes. Lmk if want to have a Netflix party xx_

Netflix party? Sounds like something I would come up with.

What now? Food, to pass the time?

Maybe Chinese.

Phone. Scroll through the app.

Oh, but he loves Kung Pao. And fried rice. And egg rolls… oh, bless all of this. All food is his favourite food. How am I ever supposed to eat anything without thinking of him? What _wouldn’t_ he like? I guess maybe… boiled carrots? Boiled anything: no salt, no spices. Just plain boring sustenance.

You’d think someone as _boring_ as him would be into boring food. Or boring things in general. But no – he has to like all of the good stuff. Which means that, to me, he _becomes_ all of the good stuff, and that there is nothing that can interest me whatsoever beside him.

Well. His good taste explains why he doesn’t like _me._

No Chinese, then. But honestly – no food in general. I don’t even eat. It’s just him. He’s been rubbing off on me.

Alcohol? No, not even, my stomach is tied up in knots and it will only make me more miserable.

Coffee might be nice. With so much sugar and cream I won’t even be able to taste it. And we’re talking about _expensive_ coffee bought at a pop-up vintage market. Properly demonic, the whole thing. Yes, coffee. If I can muster enough strength to get up.

One struggling foot in front of the other, here we are. But I open the pantry and there it is – _his_ tea. Would you look at the two of them, my coffee and his tea – a narrow, dark grey tin box, and a square, cream-coloured package. 

_Bergamot and cinnamon_.

I don’t need to pick it up and bring it close to my nose to know that it smells like him. It’s his favourite.

That night, the night when everything did not, in fact, happen, he asked for tea.

Right as we walked in. He sat down, right there – I look at the stool, yes, right there – and wringing his hands and not looking at me he asked, “what would you say to some tea?”

I hadn’t been worried up to that point. Until he asked for tea with that small voice. Blinking a lot and not looking at me. And his shoulders, I don’t know what it was about his shoulders that stabbed me right in the chest, but something did.

And I thought, _now would be a great time for a nice comforting hug_ , but did I hug him? No. Because that’s not what we do. So I made him tea instead. But I don’t _know_ how to make tea, not really. And there was only a generic Earl Grey in my pantry, because that’s what my half-fried brain managed to conjure up, apparently. I don’t even think it had a brand, it probably tasted as bland as I expect tea to taste. Don’t like tea. But I made him some, nonetheless. The human way, because I had to keep my grabby hands occupied. And all the while, as I watched the water boil and pretended to read what wasn’t, in fact, on the box, I listened to his breathing and trembled with a frankly absurd desire to turn around and ask him, _do you want to breathe with me for a minute_?

Anyway, about his tea. He drank my bland monstrosity without so much as flinching, and there wasn’t much talking about beverages for the rest of the night. But two days after that, he knocks at my door at 5 pm sharp. We weren’t supposed to meet. But I open up and there he is, holding that square cream-coloured box in those perfect nervous hands and _still_ not looking at me. And he shrugs, and goes, “if you’re going to have tea around the house, you might as well have a good one.” He made us a cup, and I didn’t drink, and we sat there in silence, and I don’t think I’d ever been happier – sitting across him, _him_ , alive and bright-eyed, hiding a tiny smile in a cup of tea. 

Bergamot and cinnamon.

Don’t ask me how I know that smell is strongest right behind his ears.

Now that I think about it, though…

Before I know it, I’m making tea again. Again, the human way. But his tea, this time, the _good one_.

I wonder how much he’s using the phone I gave him. _If_ he’s even using it, or it lies forgotten on a shelf, gathering dust. Not unlike me. Hanging around, holding onto our last bit of battery life for when he’s finished with his tomes and goes looking for a friendly voice. He looked at it like it was some sort of endangered animal when I gave it to him. “I am hardly tech-savvy, dear,” but I wouldn’t hear it. Needed something to reach him always, even when he’s out. When I told him that, he looked so sad; he put it in an inner pocket. I asked him to promise me he would keep it on him. He promised.

I take a picture of the steaming cup. Could be nice; just to tell him I’m thinking of him.

Lame?

He shouldn’t know that I’m thinking of him.

And what does he care, besides?

But what if he’s lonely?

And that thought is apparently enough to text him,

_I’m making tea_.

Suddenly I’m no longer a fallen angel, but a teenage human who’s been left on read.

He reads it immediately, and nothing happens.

This is it. This is how I ruined 6001 years of precarious platonic partnership. By not being able to resist a few _months_ without reaching out. And to do what – to send a stupid text that doesn’t say anything and by not saying anything, of course, is saying entirely too much. Only thing left to do is turn it off and go to sleep. No alarms. Maybe I’ll be lucky enough to dissolve in my sleep.

Okay, he’s typing.

God, it’s taking him a fucking century. I would get paranoid and think he’s writing a whole essay on how I need to leave him alone, except I know he can’t type for the life of him. I can just picture him, phone flat on his desk, teeny glasses on the tip of his nose, pressing the keys with one index finger. Two if we’re lucky. It’s not that he couldn’t use the thing if he wanted to, heaven, he could _miracle_ the blessed text, it’s just that he expects technology not to cooperate, and so technology doesn’t.

And then, all of a sudden, a soft _whoop_ , a little light grey cloud:

_Not that sorry excuse for an Earl Grey, I should hope._

“You’re the fucking love of my life,” I growl to my phone. _I should hope_. I want to squish his face until it explodes.

_Bergamot and cinnamon._

The fact that he reads it the moment I send it. The fact that he’s looking at a screen the moment I am looking at a screen, that I know exactly what he’s doing without seeing him. Fucking heart-breaking, is what it is.

He types. He stops. He types again. He stops again. Doesn’t type for a while. Well, it’s not like _bergamot and cinnamon_ is a text that requires an answer. I’m probably not helping him out, here. I should maybe ask him a question, but that would be double-texting, and only losers double-text.

What the heaven.

_Wyd?_

_Pardon?_

_What are you doing?_

_Not much, if I’m honest. The macarons took a few tries to master and left me exhausted. I think I might have gone slightly overboard with the whole baking thing._

_Not much fun if you can’t share, eh?_

He reads. He types. He stops. Seconds and seconds of nothing – was that mean?

My screen has dimmed and I’m almost about to give up and go back to bed when,

_No._

Oh, angel.

 _I miss you_ , I type, then delete it. _How about I come over_ , I try again, but that’s not it. He’s been clear on what he wants.

I’m still pondering what I can write that won’t make me look like the serpent of Eden or a pining idiot, or possibly both, when _he_ – go figure! – double-texts _me_.

_Weren’t you going to sleep?_

I just _know_ that he’s smirking right now, the bastard, the way he always does when he hides utter certainty behind innocent curiosity, _oh, you came all this way? But you said you despised horse-riding! Oh, but weren’t you going to hibernate? Oh, but I thought you hated tragedies_ … And I have to dance this little dance, don’t I, _I know that you know that I know that you know_ etcetera, so he won’t feel threatened. Now here is a chance to stop the music, because he’s behind a screen and not standing in front of me with those silly little dimples and those fluffy-cloudy eyebrows arched in question, but will I do it?

_Couldn’t relax._

Obviously not.

_Are you okay?_

Now, _this_ I know he means. I know because he asks often. And whenever he does, he speaks softly, and his voice almost breaks toward the end, and he reaches out the tiniest bit with his fingers. Never enough to touch. I like it anyway.

_Fine. Bored._

_Can I help?_

Now, normally, one would snap. One would say, _yes, kindly take that stick out your arse and come see me_. But I am not _one_ and I like his arse the way it is, and even the stick has grown on me, honestly. Sort of. And there is the tenderness of this question, simple as it is, thrown out there without a second thought. So _him_ , the question, _can I help?_

Funny how compromising things seem okay to say in the disturbing silence of your kitchen at 7 PM during a lockdown, because I end up writing,

_Wish I could see you._

And, immediately, he,

_Me too._

_What if I called you?_

I need a second to think. To breathe. I put away my phone and go to the window. Sun’s gone down; the streets are painted a weak silver. There is _no one_ around. There is someone at a window in the building right in front of mine. We’re too far apart to tell if we’re making eye contact. They put their palm on the glass. Somehow, I not only know what they’re feeling, but feel it myself. No one’s really gone anywhere. And yet we’re each of us entirely alone. I am. Save for this here, for the soft light of a phone screen, for his voice, near and far. It is enough, and it never will be.

 _Yes_ , I type, then think better of it and write, instead,

_What about Zoom?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why hello! Can you believe it's been almost a year? I would love to say that I am back on my bullshit, but in fact, I never truly left Bullshit Town. So here is another rambling pining Janthony for your social distancing needs. If you're reading, I hope you are safe and cozy and send you all the good vibrations I have. More coming very soon :^


	2. Chapter 2

“Crowley? It’s me.”

“I know it’s you, Aziraphale. I can see you.”

“Oh. But I can’t see _you_.”

“Yeah, my camera’s off. Give me a sec.”

My _fucking_ hair. Had to choose this day of all days to become sentient and conspire against me. A fucking _floor mop_ , ‘s what it looks like. I’m pretty sure some of the curses I’m thinking slip out of my mouth, but I look at Aziraphale and he doesn’t seem to have noticed. He’s just sitting there, staring into the distance. He looks a bit tired. A heaviness around the eyes. Would always look like that when he came back from head office but would never tell me what it was.

I buy time. Some hair wax is bound to do the trick. “Say, how come I can see you so well, when your computer is a thousand years old?”

He huffs, suddenly awake. “Don’t be ridiculous. I barely got it…” I catch a glimpse of robin egg-blue nails as he counts on his fingers. “Twenty-five years ago, this year. My, time does fly.”

I have to smile. I can’t believe it. It’s like his brain is so huge and complicated there’s no space left in his pretty skull for the simplest things. “Yeah, yeah, my point is – it’s old. Comparatively. And you don’t even own a webcam.”

“Oh.” He seems oddly taken aback at the news. “I don’t, do I.”

“Mind telling me _how_ exactly we’re video-chatting?”

“Well.” He shrugs. “I guess I just sort of… manifested it.”

“ _Manifested_ it.”

“That’s how humans are calling it these days, did you know, dear? They came up with this _positive thinking_ technique, the _law of attraction_ , they call it, and they say if they can think about something or someone hard enough…”

“Do you realize that’s literal bullshit?”

“Now, don’t be… oh! Hello there!”

The smile is the thing. When he sees me. Not the fake, tight-lipped one, for customers and bosses – and me occasionally when I’m pushing my luck. This one’s far too open for both his comfort and mine, it’s so big it lets out a bit of the soft and squishy stuff that’s got to be somewhere in there. That scares him to death. Which is why it’s also very brief, there, see? Gone already. 

“Your hair, it looks…”

_Incredibly ugly. Overgrown. Probably greasy, what with the wax and all._

“Very fetching.”

“Uh?”

“Yes, well.” By now he’s charmingly pink all over his face and neck, and stammering. “You know I like it… long…”

We both clear our throats at the same time. Well. “Ye-yeah, you mentioned. At some point.”

There are a few seconds of silence in which we are both looking at our screens, but not at each other on the screen. This is going spectacularly bad and we haven’t even started.

“Well, anyway, I was saying,” I say, in an attempt to break the tension, “that whole _manifesting_ thing… complete bollocks.”

“You know, I thought so too. But then – you can’t deny that there is power in imagination, and in belief, and – and what if…”

“Sure, yeah, but it’s _manifesting_ that we’re talking about here, angel, these people believe that if they concentrate hard enough the object of their desire will, what, magically show up at their doorstep, and that’s just fucked up if you ask me.”

I see his teeth bite slightly on his lower lip to form an _f_ and then hesitate, struggling to get the bad word out. Two or three attempts and he spits it out: “fucked up _how_?”

I vaguely register that we’re entering dangerous territory, but it’s too late to go back. “Well, for one thing, it just won’t work and the people writing books and stuff are profiting off hopes and dreams. Perfectly demonic, don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of false hope, but still. Fucked up. And even if it _did_ work, what if the object of your desire did not want to be an object of desire, or _your_ object specifically? Say that you wish for someone to be into you. They couldn’t consent, then. Now _that_ is one demonic thing I don’t dig.”

By the time I finish my monologue and look up, he’s staring with a wicked little smile and the twinkle in his eyes he gets when he’s about to say something clever.

“Well, how _nice_ of you to worry about objects of desire.”

I barely have the strength to protest, and there are no walls I can push him against. If I were feeling so inclined. Which I may or may not be. It feels very hot in here all of a sudden. “Look, I’m just saying that if I _were_ an object…”

“I don’t think it’s possible for a feeling so intense to be entirely one-sided.”

“Huh?”

“ _Amor, ch’a nullo amato amar perdona_ , is that right?”

Of course. Of course he would quote _Dante_ at me. The absolute bastard. What am I supposed to say to that?

Man, was the Dante fever real, back then. I remember copying some of the stuff and keeping a note with me for a century at least – to do what, one might ask, to give to him? As if I’d ever have it in me to do something like that. Nice guy, though, Dante. A tad obsessed with Virgil. Can you imagine being tits-over-arse in love with an ancient dead person? Hear they’ve been getting it _on_ down there, though. Guess some May-December loves do last.

Anyway. I kept telling Aziraphale that Shakespeare must have had Paolo and Francesca in mind when he was writing _Romeo and Juliet_. He said, nothing to do with it. Said it was nothing but a trope, this, star-crossed lovers. Could find it everywhere if you went looking for it. “An effective cautionary tale,” he used to add, side-eyeing me as if to say, _that’s how we’re going to end up if you don’t give this up, the unsent letters and the loitering and the asking without asking._ He used to say “ _destroyed_ ,” with that look in his eyes as if he could see it happen right there and then. And now he’s telling me perhaps these lovers had a point after all.

Bullshit.

Because still I’m here, and he’s there.

All these thoughts and I only manage to say, “that is a _nice_ thing to believe.”

He’s quiet, and what I’m feeling is not anger, precisely, it’s more that resigned feeling that makes you punch things hard enough to calm you down but not enough to hurt yourself. Or at least that’s all that comes to mind looking at my closed fists in my lap.

“What’s wrong?”

I shake my head. “I’m sorry, I guess I’m just not in the best mood right now.”

“Of course. No one is.”

“It’s not about the _pandemic_ , angel.”

He shuts up again, and I expect him to look away when I look up, but instead he stares. Looking like he’s waiting for me to say or do something, like he always is. Yeah, there’s the anger. Found it. _Someone_ , but I didn’t want things to get awkward so soon.

“You know what would make me feel better?” I snap my fingers, and we are both holding glasses of red wine.

“Ooh,” he goes, all wide-eyed and excited as if I’d just performed a magic trick. He holds the glass delicately from the stem and tilts it, examines it. Apparently satisfied, he swirls it and sniffs it, then swirls it again. By the time his lips touch the rim of the glass I’m in hell. And I’ve been to Hell.

“Well?”

He smiles. “Forgive me for borrowing your expression, dear, but what an _old sap_ you are.”

My turn to smile. Well. “Eh, nothing wrong with a trip down memory lane.”

“Quite.” He drinks, all the while looking at me, and I have to hide my face in my glass before it plays tricks on me.

“2017 was a good year for _Crozes-Hermitage_ ,” I say, eventually, because I’ve got nothing to say.

He nods. “It was a good year for us, too, wasn’t it?”

Why does he _persist_ in going down the steep, no-good, terrible road? “Y-yeah, sure was. Always say kids get more manageable when they grow older and grumpy and stop speaking to you…”

“I remember you staggering into the _dépendance_ that evening,” he interrupts me. He speaks dreamily, looking somewhere else – at the _me_ of back then, maybe, “already tipsy, bottle in hand and your pantyhose ripped, and you just…” he gestures vaguely with the hand still holding the glass, “you were just so _giddy_. You told me about Thaddeus making a move on you and you were laughing so hard you could barely talk. Those were such tense times, but that night… we didn’t even _think_ , that night. There was nothing else, no plan, no adversaries. Just you and me and this wonderful wine you’d stolen from the cellar. I don’t think I’ve ever…”

But here he stops, and he looks back at me, and he looks somewhat guilty. He takes another sip, and I don’t know what to say. Which is becoming a bit of a theme. It’s just that I can’t believe that my milestones with him – the moments I hang onto when everything else just spirals out of control, the moments that make me say _yes, yes he does, you’re right after all, this is right_ – are the same for him. That somewhere in his mind he has a timeline that looks roughly like mine.

Well, fuck it then. “You know, I remember the morning after better.”

“You do?”

“Mm-hmm. When I woke up in your bed. Drunk as hell, I’d forgotten to sober up. It was so early it wasn’t even light outside. Could only hear the birds. You were standing at the window.”

“I don’t remember.”

“You didn’t know I was awake. I think.”

“Then why do _you_ remember?”

Fuck this. “I dunno, I guess… I guess I remember thinking…” There’s something in my throat that won’t come up and won’t go down. I work around it. “You were just there, standing upright, and I remember thinking, _he’s here, he’s looking out, I’m safe_. And I guess the thought was always there, but. You know. I don’t know. It sounds stupid probably.”

“No.” He shakes his head, “no, it doesn’t.”

I mutter a “whatever” in the blessed wine. This was a bad choice.

“It’s just a bit surprising, because, well, that was always _you_ to me.”

“Me what?”

“There. Looking out.”

“Ah.”

“Keeping _me_ safe.”

There is a whole circus in my throat now, dancing elephants and all, and I can’t speak well. Can’t even breathe well. I make some noises, hoping that he’ll stop talking.

He doesn’t. “And I never thanked you for that.”

Words. Words need to be said. “You thanked me plenty.”

“Not _properly_. Never properly.”

“Really, you don’t… I don’t…”

“I know it doesn’t look like it, but I have been doing a lot of thinking lately.”

“Hmm?”

“You’ve been nothing but kind and patient, for _millennia_ , Crowley, and what have I given you in return? What _am_ I giving you, now that nothing’s weighing on me? More rules, rejections and fear. And still you’re there, giving up sleep to talk to me about nothing through a screen, miracling wine that we drank one happy night a decade ago. I’m not looking for trouble or picking a fight, I’m just… you keep amazing me, is all.”

I say nothing. He continues. “And I don’t feel up to the standard you’ve set.”

“Can you stop?”

He stops. What I _want_ to do is to tell him that I have a headache, hang up on him, slip into bed and close my eyes. What I want is complete darkness and a satin pillowcase. What I _need_ is to buckle up and have this uncomfortable conversation, and then a series of increasingly uncomfortable conversations until we somehow figure out what we are and what we’re doing. Tough choice.

“Do you want to talk? Because I have had quite enough of small talk and pleasantries, after all that’s happened, and I can tell that you have too.”

“ _Now_ you’ve had enough. Now that you won’t even allow me to see you. Tell me, does it feel safer behind a screen? Was that the problem all along? Should’ve done this sooner.”

“Well, I was more than willing to give you space and reconvene in _July_. It was you who wrote to me, and…”

“Oh, of course, of course. It was _my_ fault. Good old wily tempter, should’ve known you can never say no.”

“I merely _meant_ ,” we’re both losing our composures a bit here, and neither of us is appreciating the wine anymore, which is kind of a shame, “that it feels a bit silly to keep talking about the weather as if there’s no reason in particular that we’re still seeing each other after…” He somehow manages to make a gesture signifying Heaven, Hell, God, the Ineffable Plan, the Apocalypse and the Antichrist in a row. “As if we were just passing the time.”

“Because there is a reason.”

“Obviously.”

“But you won’t say it.”

“I…”

He doesn’t.

“Angel, honestly, what is it that you want from me? Because it’s obvious by now that I’m just sort of _here_ , aren’t I, just waiting for the right moment to… I don’t even know what. This is just who we are. You think and I wait. And it’s. You’re right it’s silly. But I don’t know what else I’m supposed to be doing and it’s been so long.”

“ _You_ are not supposed to do anything at all, Crowley, I am. I’m not doing the work I’m supposed to be doing.”

Something, something ancient that’s been with me for as long as I’ve existed as I am, tells me that I should reassure him. That I should say _it’s okay, angel, you can never do anything wrong, I am okay and you are okay and things will be just peachy_. But I’ve run out. I’ve run out of reassurances, and it’s been _so long_. And I want him to take care of things for once. To say, _here is this yarn, I’ve done what I could, can you please finish untangling it and come back when it’s ready for knitting?_

“I don’t know that I can help you with that, angel.”

“You can’t. I just wanted you to know that I’m aware.”

That _is_ something, truth be told. I nod.

“Are you going to sleep, after all?”

“Nah. Plants won’t threaten themselves. Besides, I suppose there are better ways to _pass the time_.”

That gains me a small smile. A brief respite. But there is an unspoken question there, too, and I suppose one more nudge won’t hurt. “Call you tomorrow?” I ask.

“You must.”

The fact that I’m here, and he’s there, and we’re closer than ever. So much so it’s frightening.

“Goodnight, angel.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Love to make them talk about things


End file.
